I need her to trust me.
A two-hour hellish drive through traffic gives me plenty of time to reflect on the day, and not just about my first encounter with Reille Reece. However weird he is, Jackson Trace is right. It’s not safe to go home with strange men, or get in the car with them, or wake up naked and alone in places I don’t recognize. I don’t know what I was thinking, and the longer I dwell on it, the more anxious I get. Whole chunks of my memory are still missing, and I know I wasn’t that drunk.
I need to be more careful. Put my guard back up. I’m closer to answers than I’ve been in this entire year, and I can’t mess it up for the sake of a few drinks and the vague recollection of a boy blond bombshell who put his hands up my shirt.
Punching in the code to the front door of my apartment building, I step inside and slam the rusted iron and glass barrier closed behind me. When I turn around and glance up the stairs, nothing’s ever looked better than my ugly, avocado-green hallway with its peeling paint and old wooden steps coated in several lumpy layers of red high-gloss. Not even the loud blast of mariachi music coming from 2C derails my relief at heading three stories up and worlds away from everywhere I’ve been today. When the thin soles of my flats hit my doormat, I sigh with relief and fish around in my bag for my keys. I’m home, which means I can kick off my shoes, my clothes, climb into a hot shower, and scald my skin until everything goes away for a while. It means I can drop into bed and process everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four—
The door jerks open, interrupting my daydream. “Puta, where the hell have you been?”
I’m standing there with the key in my hand, staring at a pair of shoes that I’d break my ankles in. Up go the eyeballs, over her tight, red sheath dress, golden bling, and thick, black hair before I land on warm brown skin and perfectly-placed cat-eyes. Doesn’t take long, because Jessamin Rivera is short compared to me, gorgeously effortless, and it’s ridiculous that she looks this good at nine o’clock on a Friday night when I know she’s not going out.
“Well?” she snaps. “I was just about to come looking for you.”
I grin at that, waving a hand at her less-than-sensible gear. “Yeah? You and what army, G.I. Barbie? I think there’s some camo face paint in the medicine cabinet.”
“That’s not funny, pendeja.” She steps back to let me in, but keeps one hand on the door so that she can slam it the second I’m inside. “I haven’t seen you since yesterday morning. I was going to call the police.”
“It hasn’t been forty-eight hours yet, so they wouldn’t have done anything.” I drop my bag on the floor and turn to face the irate Latina.
“Seriously, Lourdes.” Jess says my name like my mom used to, with the subtle hint of unspoken middle and last name that signaled I was in trouble. “What the hell is going on?”
“I went to a gig, then I went to an audition, then I came home.”
“A two day gig? A two day audition?” Jess crosses her arms over her chest and sticks one foot out, tapping her toe. “Then how do you explain the twenty apple pies in my kitchen, Lolo?”
I’m already headed down the dimly-lit hallway, but that gives me pause. “What are you talking about?”
With a huff of frustration, Jess shoves me down the narrow corridor until we hit the living room, which is full of stuff. Random stuff. Stuff that has no reason, rhyme, or consistent theme. There are paperweights, balloons, flower arrangements, fruit arrangements, cards, toys, novelty toys, sausage baskets, cheese baskets, and other things that I can’t even begin identify at a glance.
“What the fucking butts.” I shoot a look back at her like she can explain the insanity that’s become my life. “What is all this?”
“You tell me,” she fires back.
“I, um…” I don’t know. “I, uh…” Is this really happening? “Er… did it come with a card?”
Jess waves an impatient hand in the direction of everything that’s gathered in our apartment. “Yeah, about three hundred of them.”
I locate the nearest arrangement of something. Cookies, by the looks of it. Cookies shaped like shoes. Plucking the card from the plastic holder, I read the front. A smiling cartoon character with casts on both legs encourages me to “Get back on your feet soon!”
Flipping it open, I find that there’s an actual typed message inside.
Ms. Chase,
Didn’t know what you liked, so I got you one of each.
Welcome to Apocalypse.
X.
I put that card down and pick up another. It’s got an identical message inside. So does the one after that. I keep checking them, like it’s all going to make sense eventually. Like I’m going to find that one card in the midst of all this that says, “April Fools!” or something equally explanatory.
“Ringin’ any bells, hermana?” asks Jess, apparently tired of my gape-mouthed, wide-eyed staring. “What about the pies?”
“What pies?” The question comes out a little absently, because I’m spinning in slow circles, letting my eyes sweep over the floor-to-ceiling “one of each” cluttering up my home.
“The ones in the kitchen,” Jess says before adding, “Apple. Twenty of them.”
Eyes narrowed, I stare at her. “Are there really twenty apple pies in the kitchen?”
She points a finger at the couch. “Are there really five dildos in the corner?”
With a squint, I read the labels on the five bright-pink boxes next to the sofa and offer up a tentative, “Yes?”
“Then you better believe there are twenty fucking pies in the kitchen.”
It’s like I’ve landed in some weird universe where dicks and pies are the perfect welcome-to-the-big-time gifts. Worst part is, I know exactly who “X” is, and as I think about it, my hands start to sweat a little. I didn’t spot him there today, but stage lights aren’t conducive to seeing the audience. I didn’t expect him, either, and I’m glad I didn’t know.
Probably would’ve choked if you had.
“Where was this gig?” Jess demands.
“Scion,” I say, clutching a fistful of paper in each hand, rubbing the pleasantly-ribbed vellum between my fingertips. “I got the job.”
“Congratulations. I’ll pop open that bottle of Cristal and we can toast the gig you landed with the mentally-unhinged vampire.” Except Jess makes no move toward the champagne. That and the dripping sarcasm tip me off that she’s less than pleased by this turn of events.
“You’re supposed to be happy for me,” I say slowly. “You know how hard I’ve worked for this.”
No lie. I’ve taken every DJ gig I could get my hands on, spent nights at bars with my acoustic guitar, handed my business card out to every suit and sleazebag who offered me his hand. Plenty had offered more than a hand, but not that kind of girl carried over to sleeping my way up the record exec ladder, so it’s taken a long time to land a break, and now Jess is raining on my parade for all it’s worth.
“Xaine is dangerous. He blows through women like tissues. He breaks them.” Jess folds her arms across her chest.
“I’m not there for him,” I tell her. “You know that.”
“You’re still walking into a viper’s nest,” she says. “Any one of those vamps in that place has enough money and power to kill you and make it look like an accident. And Xaine…” Jess huffs out a derisive sound. “He’s a Scipio. Which makes it all a hundred times worse.”
“Like I said, I’m not there for Xaine.” Jess doesn’t look the least bit appeased by my reiteration of fact, which sparks my irritation. “And how do you know so much about him anyway?”
“Oh, I know plenty about him, and none of it good. So we’re gonna call a courier service and have this dumped on Scion’s front stairs.” She heads off to find her cell phone, normally glued to her hand.
She must really be upset if she put it down, even for a second.
I follow her into the kitchen, where she’s shifting apple pies around and muttering like a crazy person. “J
ess.”
“I’ll dildo him, that shirtless capullo.”
I take a stack of five pastry boxes out of her hands before she can toss them to one side. “Jess.”
“What kind of sick freak sends sex toys to a stranger?” Her elbow nudges a vase sitting precariously on the edge of the counter.
No, not a vase. A fish bowl. A fish bowl with flowers in it, or maybe a vase with fish in it. Either way, it’s the weird cherry on a spectacularly-weird sundae, and I’m standing there with my arms full of pie and my options are laugh, or cry.
Leaning against the wall, I tip my head back. The first tiny giggle catches hold of me and then it’s on. Sliding to the floor, I’m helpless, caught in the throes of something more than the ridiculous sight of the fishy floral arrangement or the shoe cookies or the fact that I haven’t had anything to eat in god knows how long. Reaching a hand up, I get the nearest drawer open and scrabble around until my fingers close down on a fork. The other hand is already untying the string on the top pink cardboard box and flipping the lid open. And by golly, there’s pie, oozing cinnamon juice around pastry so buttery that it’s yellow.
“Do we have any ice cream?” I ask.
“What?” Jess barks. “No, we don’t have any damn ice cream, and don’t eat that, it’s probably poisoned!”
Too late. I’ve already shoveled a mouthful of it in, and if it is poisoned, this is how I want to go. Shifting it to one cheek so I don’t choke, I peer up at her. “Do we have any milk?”
“This is not funny, Lolo.” Much like Jackson Trace, Jess Rivera also has a serious voice. It’s the one I’m supposed to heed whenever it comes out of the closet, but right now, the ridiculous and tired and hungry all outweigh the serious of the situation.
“No, it’s not,” I agree, then reach over and pull a foot-long Hillshire Farm beef stick out of a nearby basket. “It’s hilarious. Can you hand me a knife and a cutting board?”
Jess opens her mouth, but the sudden, muffled sound of music chimes from under one of those giant circular tins that hold cheese and caramel popcorn. This one has the Hollywood sign etched into the side of it and a ring of palm trees around the bottom.
Because every tourist wants to wrangle a can of popcorn home in their suitcase, right?
She drops the tin into my lap and picks up her phone, leaving me to peel off the cellophane and pop the lid. It’s not nitrate-processed mystery meat, but it will do for the moment.
Jess puts the cell to her ear and picks her way toward the bathroom on spindly heels, slamming the door shut between us for a smidge of privacy. A muffled “yes, sir” tells me she’s on the line with her boss, some East Coast power broker who keeps Jess on a tight schedule and a short leash.
A few handfuls of popcorn in, I’m in desperate need of something to drink and maybe some protein. Setting aside all the junk food, I manage to make my way to the fridge. Chilly air hits me in the face when I open the door, just like—
The room. The one with the metal tables, concrete floors, dim lights.
The room.
“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?” His voice is commanding, his body swathed in a perfectly-tailored suit. Amber eyes flash at everyone gathered, but they ignore him. Clothed like doctors, like surgeons, they go about their business as if he hadn’t spoken at all.
“Cas is going to kill you!” another woman screams. That’s when I notice her, strapped to the table and struggling, her red hair fanned out across the metal, pale arms straining against the wrist straps. “He’s going to rip you apart, destroy everything you ever—”
A man reaches out, backhanding her with one blue latex-gloved hand. Blood splashes across my face, cast-off splatter from the damage done to her nose, her lip. I can taste it in my mouth, and I try hard not to swallow it, but there’s no other option, so it trails down my throat, metallic and thick, lingering on my tongue long after it’s gone. Drying on my face long after she is gone.
After that, I’m alone. Alone with the doctors because the man with the amber eyes is gone, too. It’s just me, and them, and I can’t even move as they methodically stick me with needle after needle, running an intricate web of tubes from each and every artery.
“Destroy us, will he?” one man intones, flipping a switch on the machine. Searing, burning pain spreads through the entirety of my body, and I bite my lip, holding back a scream, back arching off the table. He smiles behind his mask and says, “Not if we destroy him first.”
Pushing away from the refrigerator, I brush at my arms, frantic, like I’m covered in spiders. Adrenaline surges so hard that I swear I can feel it pumping through each individual artery. A cool sheen of sweat breaks out on my skin, and it’s not until my ass hits the opposite counter that I realize I’m no longer…
Dreaming?
Remembering?
Mid-flail, my elbow knocks against the fishbowl. It wobbles, and I scramble at it in vain before it detonates against the floor. For a second, I stand there, shell-shocked, feet wet, with glass between my toes. It’s the tiny goldfish flopping across my foot that finally has me shuffling between broken bits of vase, sodden pie and approximately four hundred yellow calla lilies in order to grab cups out of the sink strainer. I fill them with a few inches of water before lining them up on the tiled counter. It’s harder than advertised to scoop flopping ornamental fish off a linoleum floor, so I end up using my bare hands. There’s five of them, and by the time I get to the last one, he’s acting like a goner.
“Shit, shit, shit. Sorry! So sorry!”
“Who—” Jess starts to say behind me, and then there’s the kind of strangled noise that people make when they’re robbed of speech. “What did you… I was gone for a minute, maybe!”
“I’m a murderer,” I mutter, avoiding the worst of the glass as I tiptoe toward the sink with the last flopping goldfish in my cupped hands. I think you’re supposed to put some kind of chemical drops in their water, but tap is going to have to suffice for now. Better than a trip down the toilet bowl, I guess.
“You’re something,” she says, grabbing a broom from the crack between the fridge and the wall. Pretty soon there’s a pile of broken crystal in the corner, and we’ve tossed dishcloths over the worst of the water. Once the chaos is reined in, Jess takes a slow look around. Her head shakes in disapproval, her usual fire traded in for a weary expression. Eventually, those warm, brown eyes come to rest on my face again, and she heaves a sigh. “Only you.”
“Yup,” I say, because it’s true. Only I would hallucinate something with my head stuck in the refrigerator and then smash a vase of fish on the kitchen floor. “When it rains, it pours, I guess.”
“Tell me you didn’t sign anything,” she says in a flat tone that I’ve never heard before. It’s not the joking voice or the serious voice or the diva voice; it’s worried, and it draws my attention back from whatever happened in that damn medical lab. “Please.”
I avert my gaze to the relocated goldfish. “I signed.”
She shakes her head, sending those dark waves of hair flying. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“I’m just an opening act,” I say, trying to reassure her. “Not even the only one. There’s a trio, too. I’m not even a blip on Xaine’s radar, anyway.”
“Do you think that trio ended up with all this?” Jess gestures to everything gathered around us, gifts from a man I never even met. From my new boss. From a rock-and-roll superstar. “Trust me, hermana, you’re on his radar.”
“I’ll keep away.”
“Not away enough.”
“I don’t know what else to say. It’s already done.”
At that, Jess turns her head until she’s staring at something or nothing or just the space inside her head. “You’re right. It’s already done.”
Then she walks away. Skirt and heels and nails and jet-black curls, all of it disappears from the kitchen, leaving me alone with my folly.
I’m not a kid anymore, but somehow J
ax and Jess have both made me feel like the most naive little girl on the planet today. A perfect match to the pink stuffed rabbit sitting atop another stack of apple pies. Staring hard at that stupid fuzzy lump of faux fur and synthetic fabric brings a scowl to my face.
“First things first,” I tell the fish. “I need to get rid of all this crap.”
Mariachi trumpets blare from one floor down. I’m not the biggest fan of 2C, but he can have the blue glass sculpture in the living room, a sausage basket, and pie. The dark-haired girl down the hall gets the shoe cookies and all the dildos. She lives alone with her cat, so she probably needs them.
Oh, and pie.
“You get a pie, and you get a pie,” I mutter under my breath. “And you get a pie.”
Ho, ho, ho, neighbors. Merry Pie-mas.
I start gathering armfuls of stuff, my mind in that place where I’m half-petrified and half-laughing. Because it’s crazy, right? These last few days have been stranger than fiction. Not sure I could sleep now if I tried. I’d likely spend the entire night dwelling on the missing time, the yawning blank spot in my memory.
And all of the girls asleep in their beds, while visions of blood and teeth dance in their heads.
Yeah, hard pass on the nightmares.
Playing Dildo Santa sounds way more fun, anyway.
CHAPTER FOUR
Xaine
I’ve been meaning to drop in on my sire, though it sounds formal to call him that. The Scipio family patriarch hit stateside almost a month ago, right about the time that my entire life detonated. I can’t put it off any longer, and I’m sure Matty’s already filled Roman’s ear with a thousand excuses.
The drive to Los Feliz takes less than twenty minutes in a supercar that purrs like the million-dollar machine she is. By the time I ease the Zenvo onto the 5, I’ve relaxed into the leather seat. Rolling the window down, I let the warm air cut across the elbow I have propped up on the door.
Better. This is better than bodies pulled out of dumpsters and blonde girls singing my own memories back to me.
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